Ending Poverty As We Know It: Guaranteeing a Right to a Job at a Living Wage

Across the United States tens of millions of people are working forty or more hours a week...and living in poverty. This is surprising in a country where politicians promise that anyone who does their share, and works hard, will get ahead. In Ending Poverty As We Know It, William Quigley argues that it is time to make good on that promise by adding to the Constitution language that insures those who want to work can do so—and at a wage that enables them to afford reasonable shelter, clothing, and food.

William P. Quigley is Professor of Law and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University, New Orleans. He has been an active public interest lawyer for over 20 years, and served as counsel for a wide range of public interest organizations on issues including public housing, voting rights, death penalty, living wage, civil liberties, educational reform and constitutional rights. Quigley has litigated numerous cases with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., and has been General Counsel for the ACLU of Louisiana since 1985. He has served as Chair of the Louisiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and with many other local, state, and national legal and civil rights organizations. Well known in Louisiana, this winter he helped push through a measure that raised the income of many New Orleans residents by one dollar an hour.